Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet and gracious language" and Spanish playwright Lope de Vega referred to it as "sweet", while the Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as "a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela" (the last flower of Latium, rustic and beautiful). Portuguese is also termed "the language of Camões", after one of the greatest literary figures in the Portuguese language, Luís Vaz de Camões.[7][8][9]

In March 2006, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, an interactive museum about the Portuguese language, was founded in São Paulo, Brazil, the city with the greatest number of Portuguese language speakers in the world.[10] The Museum is the first of its kind in the world.[10]

When the Romans arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BCE, they brought the Latin language with them, from which all Romance languages descend. The language was spread by arriving Roman soldiers, settlers, and merchants, who built Roman cities mostly near the settlements of previous Celtic or Celtiberian civilizations established long before the Roman arrivals.

Portuguese evolved from the medieval language, known today by linguists as Galician-Portuguese or Old Portuguese or Old Galician, of the northwestern medieval Kingdom of Galicia, the first among the Christian kingdoms after the start of the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors. It is in Latin administrative documents of the 9th century that written Galician-Portuguese words and phrases are first recorded. This phase is known as Proto-Portuguese, which lasted from the 9th century until the 12th-century independence of the County of Portugal from the Kingdom of Galicia, then a subkingdom of León.

In the first part of Galician-Portuguese period (from the 12th to the 14th century), the language was increasingly used for documents and other written forms. For some time, it was the language of preference for lyric poetry in Christian Hispania, much as Occitan was the language of the poetry of the troubadours in France. Portugal became an independent kingdom in 1139, under King Afonso I of Portugal. In 1290, King Denis of Portugal created the first Portuguese university in Lisbon (the Estudos Gerais, later moved to Coimbra) and decreed that Portuguese, then simply called the "common language", be known as the Portuguese language and used officially.

In the second period of Old Portuguese, in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Africa, Asia and the Americas. By the mid-16th century, Portuguese had become a lingua franca in Asia and Africa, used not only for colonial administration and trade but also for communication between local officials and Europeans of all nationalities.

Its spread was helped by mixed marriages between Portuguese and local people, and by its association with Roman Catholicmissionary efforts, which led to the formation of creole languages such as that called Kristang in many parts of Asia (from the word cristão, "Christian"). The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century. Some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal.

The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, in 1516. The early times of Modern Portuguese, which spans a period from the 16th century to the present day, were characterized by an increase in the number of learned words borrowed from Classical Latin and Classical Greek due to the Renaissance, which greatly enriched the lexicon.

Portuguese is the language of the majority of people in Brazil.[12] Portugal,[13] 99.8% of the population of São Tomé and Príncipe declared speaking Portuguese in the 1991 census, mostly as a second language.[citation needed] Perhaps a quarter of the population of Angola speaks Portuguese natively,[14] and 85% are fluent.[15] Just over 10% of the population of Mozambique are native speakers of Portuguese in Mozambique, and 50% are fluent, according to the 2007 census.[16] It is also spoken natively by 11% of the population in Guinea-Bissau.[17] No data is available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, and the monolingual population speaks Cape Verdean Creole.

In some parts of the former Portuguese India, namely Goa[39] and Daman and Diu),[40] the language is still spoken. The Portuguese language is currently making a strong comeback in the Portuguese speaking territories in India, particularly in Goa. This revivalist movement is being referred to as a Portuguese language and culture renaissance. The younger generation of Goans are eagerly learning Portuguese in the some of the schools there that teach it. Most elderly Christian Goans are still fluent in Portuguese.

Equatorial Guinea made a formal application for full membership to the CPLP in June 2010 and would be required to add Portuguese as its third official language (alongside Spanish and French), as required by the CPLP for membership. The President of Equatorial Guinea, Obiang Nguema Mbasog, and Prime Minister Ignacio Milam Tang approved on 20 July 2011 a new Constitutional bill that intends to add Portuguese as an official language of the country. As of 23 July 2012, the bill is awaiting ratification by the People's Representative Chamber and it shall come into force 20 days after its publication at the official state's gazette.[41][42][43]

This means that the population living in the Lusophone official area is of 261,976,607 inhabitants. This number does not include the Lusophonediaspora, estimated at approximately 10 million people (including 4.5 million Portuguese, 3 million Brazilians, and half a million Cape Verdeans, among others), although it is hard to obtain official accurate numbers of diasporic Portuguese speakers because a significant portion of these citizens are naturalized citizens born outside of Lusophone territory or are children of immigrants, and may have only a basic command of the language. It is also important to note that a large part of the diaspora is a part of the already-counted population of the Portuguese-speaking countries and territories, such as the high number of Brazilian and PALOP emigrant citizens in Portugal or the high number of Portuguese emigrant citizens in the PALOP and Brazil.

The Portuguese language therefore serves more than 250 million people daily, who have direct or indirect legal, juridical and social contact with it, varying from the only language used in any contact, to only education, contact with local or international administration, commerce and services or the simple sight of road signs, public information and advertising in Portuguese.

According to estimates by UNESCO, Portuguese is the fastest-growing European language after English and the language has, according to the newspaper The Portugal News publishing data given from UNESCO, the highest potential for growth as an international language in southern Africa and South America.[56] The Portuguese-speaking African countries are expected to have a combined population of 83 million, and Brazil 350 million by 2050. In total, the Portuguese-speaking countries will have about 433[57] million people by the same year.[56] Portuguese is truly a globalized language spoken officially in 5 continents, and as a second language by millions worldwide.

Since 1991, when Brazil signed into the economic community of Mercosul with other South American nations, such as Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela, Portuguese is either mandatory, or taught, in the schools of those South American countries.

Although early in the 21st century, after Macau was ceded to China and Brazilian immigration to Japan slowed down, the use of Portuguese was in decline in Asia, it is once again becoming a language of opportunity there, mostly because of increased diplomatic and financial ties with Portuguese-speaking countries in China,[58] but also some interest in their cultures, mainly Koreans and Japanese about Brazil. Presently China is doing a great amount of trade with all of the Portuguese speaking countries, and the Chinese themselves are learning Portuguese. These factors bode very well for the continued growth of Portuguese as an important economic, international language.

Modern Standard European Portuguese (português padrão or português continental) is based on the Portuguese spoken in the area including and surrounding the cities of Coimbra and Lisbon, in central Portugal, while modern Standard Brazilian Portuguese (português neutro) is based on the Portuguese spoken in the area including and surrounding the city of São Paulo, in southeastern Brazil,[59][60] which if vanished from its stereotypical traits i.e. its strong European flavor in phonology and prosody, is linguistically a halfway between Brazilian dialects and accents.

Standard European Portuguese is also the preferred standard by the Portuguese-speaking African countries. As such, and despite the fact that its speakers are dispersed around the world, Portuguese has only two dialects used for learning: the European and the Brazilian. Some aspects and sounds found in many dialects of Brazil are exclusive to South America, and cannot be found in Europe. However, the Santomean Portuguese in Africa may be confused with a Brazilian dialect by its phonology and prosody. Some aspects link some Brazilian dialects with the ones spoken in Africa, such as the pronunciation of "menino", which is pronounced as [miˈninu] (though rather different for many Brazilian speakers, e.g. [me̞ˈn̠ʲĩnʊ]) compared to [mɯ̟ˈninu] in European Portuguese, though most of them are assumed to be conservative rather than innovative. Dialects from inland northern Portugal have significant similarities with Galician.

Audio samples of some dialects and accents of Portuguese are available below.[61] There are some differences between the areas but these are the best approximations possible. IPA transcriptions refer to the names in local pronunciation.

Cearense or costa norte — is a dialect spoken more sharply in the states of Ceará and Piauí. The variant of Ceará includes fairly distinctive traits it shares with the one spoken in Piauí, though, such as distinctive regional phonology and vocabulary (for example, a debuccalization process stronger than that of Portuguese, a different system of the vowel harmony that spans Brazil from fluminense and mineiro to amazofonia but is especially prevalent in nordestino, a very coherent coda sibilant palatalization as those of Portugal and Rio de Janeiro but allowed in less environments than in other accents of nordestino, a greater presence of dental stop palatalization to palato-alveolar and especially alveolo-palatal in comparison to other accents of nordestino, among others, as well as a great number of archaic Portuguese words).[68][69][70][71][72][73]

Baiano — Found in Bahia, Sergipe, northern Minas Gerais and border regions with Goiás and Tocantins. Similar to nordestino, it has a very characteristic syllable-timed rhythm and the greatest tendency to pronounce unstressed mid vowels [e̞] and [o̞] as open-mid [ɛ] and [ɔ].

Fluminense — A broad dialect with many variants spoken in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo and neighbouring eastern regions of Minas Gerais. Fluminense formed in these previously caipira-speaking areas due to the gradual influence of European migrants, causing many people to distance their speech from their original dialect and incorporate new terms.[74]Fluminense is sometimes referred to as carioca, however carioca is a more specific term referring to the accent of the Greater Rio de Janeiro area by speakers with a fluminense dialect.

Gaúcho — [ɡaˈuʃʊ], in Rio Grande do Sul, similar to sulista. There are many distinct accents in Rio Grande do Sul, mainly due to the heavy influx of European immigrants of diverse origins who have settled in colonies throughout the state, and to the proximity to Spanish-speaking nations. The gaúcho word in itself is a Spanish loanword into Portuguese of obscure Indigenous Amerindian origins.

Nordestino[75] — [nɔɦdɛʃˈtĩnu], more marked in the Sertão (7), where, in the 19th and 20th centuries and especially in the area including and surrounding the sertão (the dry land after Agreste) of Pernambuco and southern Ceará, it could sound less comprehensible to speakers of other Portuguese dialects than Galician or Rioplatense Spanish, and nowadays less distinctive from other variants in the metropolitan cities along the coasts. It can be divided in two regional variants, one that includes the northern Maranhão and southern of Piauí, and other that goes from Ceará to Alagoas.

Nortista[nɔxˈtɕiɕtɐ] or amazofonia — Most of Amazon Basin states i.e. Northern Brazil. Before the 20th century, most people from the nordestino area fleeing the droughts and their associated poverty settled here, so it has some similarities with the Portuguese dialect there spoken. The speech in and around the city of Belém has a more European flavor in phonology, prosody and grammar.

Paulistano[pawlis'tʌnu] — Variants spoken around Greater São Paulo in its maximum definition and more easterly areas of São Paulo state, as well perhaps "educated speech" from anywhere in the state of São Paulo (where it coexists with caipira). Caipira is the hinterland sociolect of much of the Central-Southern half of Brazil, nowadays conservative only in the rural areas and associated with them, that has a historically low prestige in cities as Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, and until some years ago, in São Paulo itself. Sociolinguistics, or what by times is described as 'linguistic prejudice', often correlated with classism,[76][77][78] is a polemic topic in the entirety of the country since the times of Adoniran Barbosa. Also, the "Paulistano" accent was heavily influenced by the presence of immigrants in the city of São Paulo, especially the Italians.

Sulista — The variants spoken in the areas between the northern regions of Rio Grande do Sul and southern regions of São Paulo state, encompassing most of southern Brazil. The city of Curitiba does have a fairly distinct accent as well, and a relative majority of speakers around and in Florianópolis also speak this variant (many speak florianopolitano or manezinho da ilha instead, related to the European Portuguese dialects spoken in Azores and Madeira). Speech of northern Paraná is closer to that of inland São Paulo.

Florianopolitano — Variants heavily influenced by European Portuguese spoken in Florianópolis city (due to a heavy immigration movement from Portugal, mainly its insular regions) and much of its metropolitan area, Grande Florianópolis, said to be a continuum between those whose speech most resemble sulista dialects and those whose speech most resemble fluminense and European ones, called, often pejoratively, manezinho da ilha.

Carioca — Not a dialect, but sociolects of the fluminense variant spoken in an area roughly corresponding to Greater Rio de Janeiro. It appeared after locals came in contact with the Portuguese aristocracy amidst the Portuguese royal family fled in the early 19th century. There is actually a continuum between Vernacular countryside accents and the carioca sociolect, and the educated speech (in Portuguese norma culta, which most closely resembles other Brazilian Portuguese standards but with marked recent Portuguese influences, the nearest ones among the country's dialects along florianopolitano), so that not all people native to the state of Rio de Janeiro speak the said sociolect, but most carioca speakers will use the standard variant not influenced by it that is rather uniform around Brazil depending on context (emphasis or formality, for example).

Brasiliense — used in Brasília and its metropolitan area.[79] It is not considered a dialect, but more of a regional variant – often deemed to be closer to fluminense than the dialect commonly spoken in most of Goiás, sertanejo.

Arco do desflorestamento or serra amazônica — Known in its region as the "accent of the migrants", it has similarities with caipira, sertanejo and often sulista that make it differing from amazofonia (in the opposite group of Brazilian dialects, in which it is placed along nordestino, baiano, mineiro and fluminense). It is the most recent dialect, which appeared by the settlement of families from various other Brazilian regions attracted by the cheap land offer in recently deforested areas.[80][81]

Estremenho—Regions of Coimbra, Leiria and Lisbon (this is a disputed denomination, as Coimbra is not part of "Estremadura", and the Lisbon dialect has some peculiar features that not only are not shared with the one of Coimbra, as make it significantly distinct and recognizable to most native speakers from elsewhere in Portugal).

Differences between dialects are mostly of accent and vocabulary, but between the Brazilian dialects and other dialects, especially in their most colloquial forms, there can also be some grammatical differences. The Portuguese-based creoles spoken in various parts of Africa, Asia, and the Americas are independent languages.

The Portuguese language is also the only Romance language that developed the clitic case mesoclisis: cf. dar-te-ei (I'll give thee), amar-te-ei (I'll love you), contactá-los-ei (I'll contact them). It was also the only Romance language to develop the "syntactic pluperfect past tense": cf. eu estivera (I had been), eu vivera (I had lived), vós vivêreis (you had lived). Both the tense conjugation and the mesoclisis are used for literary purposes, but forgotten elsewhere. These happen in some of the Slavic languages, Hungarian and Japanese only.

Most of the lexicon of Portuguese is derived from Latin. Nevertheless, because of its original Celtiberian heritage and later the participation of Portugal in the Age of Discovery, it has some Gallaecian words and adopted loanwords from all over the world.

A number of Portuguese words can be traced to the pre-Roman inhabitants of Portugal, which included the Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici and Cynetes. Most of these words derived from Celtic and are very often shared with Galician since both languages share a common origin in the medieval language of Galician-Portuguese. A few of these words existed in Latin as loanwords from a Celtic source, usually Gaulish, while other have been later received from other languages, mainly French and Occitan. Altogether these are about 500 words, a few verbs and toponymic names of towns, rivers, utensils and plants.

In the 5th century, the Iberian Peninsula (the RomanHispania) was conquered by the GermanicSuebi and Visigoths. As they adopted the Roman civilization and language, however, these people contributed with some Germanic words to the lexicon, mainly related to warfare—such as espora "spur", estaca "stake", and guerra "war", from Gothic*spaúra, *stakka, and *wirro, respectively. The Germanic languages influence also exists in toponymic surnames and patronymic surnames borne by Visigoth sovereigns and their descendants, and it dwells on placenames such has Ermesinde, Esposende and Resende where sinde and sende are derived from the Germanic "sinths" (military expedition) and in the case of Resende, the prefix re comes from Germanic "reths" (council). Other examples of Portuguese names, surnames and town names of Germanic toponymic origin include Henrique, Henriques, Vermoim, Mandim, Calquim, Baguim, Gemunde, Guetim, Sermonde and many more, are quite common mainly in the old Suebi and later Visigothic dominated regions, covering today's Northern half of Portugal and Galicia.

Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Portuguese acquired about 800 words from Arabic by influence of Moorish Iberia. They are often recognizable by the initial Definite article in Arabic article a(l)-,[82]

Starting in the 15th century, the Portuguese maritime explorations led to the introduction of many loanwords from Asian languages. For instance, catana "cutlass" from Japanese katana and chá "tea" from Chinesechá.

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, because of the role of Portugal as intermediary in the Atlantic slave trade, and the establishment of large Portuguese colonies in Angola, Mozambique, and Brazil, Portuguese acquired several words of African and Amerind origin, especially names for most of the animals and plants found in those territories. While those terms are mostly used in the former colonies, many became current in European Portuguese as well. From Kimbundu, for example, came kifumate > cafuné "head caress" (Brazil), kusula > caçula "youngest child" (Brazil), marimbondo "tropical wasp" (Brazil), and kubungula > bungular "to dance like a wizard" (Angola).

Finally, it has received a steady influx of loanwords from other European languages, especially French and English languages. These are by far the most important languages when referring to loanwords. There are many examples such as: colchete/crochê "bracket"/"crochet", paletó "jacket", batom "lipstick", and filé/filete "steak"/"slice", rua "street" respectively, from French crochet, paletot, bâton, filet, "rue"; and bife "steak", futebol, revólver, estoque, folclore, from English beef, football, revolver, stock, folklore. Examples from other European languages: macarrão "pasta", piloto "pilot", carroça "carriage", and barraca "barrack", from Italian maccherone, pilota, carrozza, baracca and melena "hair lock", fiambre "wet-cured ham" (in Portugal, in contrast with presunto "dry-cured ham" from Latin prae-exsuctus "dehydrated"; not in Brazil), and castelhano "Castilian", from Spanish.

Before the last four decades, Brazilians adopted a greater number of loanwords from Japanese and other European languages (due to the historical immigration affecting their demographics), and they were and are also more willing to adopt foreign terms that come from globalization than the Portuguese, while the degree of African, Tupian and other Amerindian lexicon in Brazilian Portuguese is shown to be surprisingly lesser than that commonly expected of the said variant by the local Africanist and Indianist academia (that also has to some degree influenced the common sense of what gives a different cultural identity of Brazilians in relation to the Portuguese), so that its lexicon is almost identical (about 99%) to that of European Portuguese.[83][84][85]

Many Brazilian Portuguese colonial settlers were from northern and insular Portugal[86] apart from some historically important illegal immigrants from elsewhere in Europe, such as Galicia, France and the Netherlands.[87] It should be noted that Brazil received more European immigrants in its colonial history than the United States. Between 1500 and 1760, 700,000 Europeans (overwhelmingly Portuguese) settled in Brazil, while 530,000 Europeans settled in the United States for the same given time.[88]

Map showing the historical retreat and expansion of Portuguese (Galician-Portuguese) within the context of its linguistic neighbours between the year 1000 and 2000.

Map showing mostly contemporary West Iberian and Occitano-Romance languages, as well many of their mainland European dialects (take note that areas colored green, gold or pink/purple represent languages deemed endangered by UNESCO, so this may be outdated in less than a few decades). It shows European Portuguese, Galician, Eonavian, Mirandese and the Fala as not only closely related but as dialect continuum, though it excludes dialects spoken in insular Portugal (Azores and Madeira–Canaries is not showing either).

Spanish and calão (the way caló, language of the Iberian Romani, is referred to in Portuguese).

Portuguese and other Romance languages (namely French and Italian) are not mutually intelligible, although they share considerable similarities in both vocabulary and grammar. Portuguese speakers will usually need some formal study before attaining strong comprehension in those Romance languages, and vice versa. However, Portuguese and Galician are mutually intelligible. And given that Portuguese has a larger phonemic inventory than Spanish, could explain why it is only moderately intelligible to some Spanish speakers despite the strong lexical and grammatical similarity (89%) between the two languages. Educated Portuguese and Spanish speakers generally communicate easily.

portunhol, a form of code-switching, has far more users in the Americas (but is not to be confused with the portunhol spoken on the borders of Brazil with Uruguay and Paraguay, which is a Portuguese dialect heavily influenced by Spanish rather than code-switching).

The closest language to Portuguese is Galician, spoken in the autonomous community of Galicia (northwestern Spain). The two were at one time a single language, known today as Galician-Portuguese, but since the political separation of Portugal from Galicia they have diverged, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary. But there is still a linguistic continuity, the variant of Galician referred to as "galego-português baixo-limiao" spoken in several Galician villages between the municipalities of Entrimo and Lobios and the transborder region of the natural park of Peneda-Gerês/Xurês. "Considered a rarity, a living vestige of the medieval language that ranged from Cantabria to Mondego [...]".[89] As reported by UNESCO, due to the pressure of the Spanish language in the standard official version of the Galician language, the Galician language was in the verge of disappearing.[89] According to Unesco´s philologist Tapani Salminen, the proximity with the Portuguese language makes Galician a special language that is protected due to its proximity to the Portuguese language.[90] Nevertheless, the core vocabulary and grammar of Galician are still noticeably closer to Portuguese than to those of Spanish. In particular, like Portuguese, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect. Mutual intelligibility (estimated at 90% by R. A. Hall, Jr., 1989)[91] is excellent between Galicians and northern Portuguese, and also between Galicians and Brazilians. Many linguists consider Galician to be a co-dialect of the Portuguese language. The government of Galicia has passed a law making the Portuguese language mandatory at all the school levels, intended to encourage the use of Portuguese at all levels of Galician society. Galicia will also become a full member of the CPLP (countries in the world that speak Portuguese).

Another member of the Galician-Portuguese group, most commonly thought of as a Galician dialect, is spoken in the Eonavian region in a western strip in Asturias and the westernmost parts of the provinces of León and Zamora, along the frontier with Galicia, between the Eo and Navia rivers (or more exactly Eo and Frexulfe rivers). It is called eonaviego or gallego-asturiano by its speakers.

The Fala language, known by its speakers as xalimés, mañegu, a fala de Xálima and chapurráu and in Portuguese as a fala de Xálima, a fala da Estremadura, o galego da Estremadura, valego ou galaico-estremenho, is another descendant of Galician-Portuguese, spoken by a small number of people in the Spanish towns of Valverde del Fresno (Valverdi du Fresnu), Eljas (As Ellas) and San Martín de Trevejo (Sa Martín de Trevellu) in the autonomous community of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal.

There is a number of other places in Spain in which the native language of the common people is a descendant of the Galician-Portuguese group, such as La Alamedilla, Cedillo (Cedilho), Herrera de Alcántara (Ferreira d'Alcântara) and Olivenza (Olivença), but in these municipalities, what is spoken is actually Portuguese, not disputed as such in the mainstream.

It should be noticed that the diversity of dialects of the Portuguese language is known since the time of medieval Portuguese-Galician language when it coexisted with the Lusitanian-Mozarabic dialect, spoken in the south of Portugal. The dialectal diversity becomes more evident in the work of Fernão d'Oliveira, in the Grammatica da Lingoagem Portuguesa, (1536), where he remarks that the people of Portuguese regions of Beira, Alentejo, Estremadura, and Entre Douro e Minho, all speak differently from each other. Also Contador d'Argote (1725) distinguishes three main varieties of dialects: the local dialects, the dialects of time, and of profession (work jargon). Of local dialects he highlights five main dialects: the dialect of Estremadura, of Entre-Douro e Minho, of Beira, of Algarve and of Trás-os-Montes. He also makes reference to the overseas dialects, the rustic dialects, the poetic dialect and that of prose.[92]

In the kingdom of Portugal, "Ladinho" (or "Lingoagem Ladinha") was the name given to the pure Portuguese language romance, without any mixture of Aravia or Gerigonça Judenga.[93] While the term "língua vulgar" was used to name the language before D. Dinis decided to call it "Portuguese language",[94] the erudite version used and known as Galician-Portuguese (the language of the Portuguese court) and all other Portuguese dialects were spoken at the same time. In a historical perspective the Portuguese language was never just one dialect. Just like today there is a standard Portuguese (actually two) among the several dialects of Portuguese, in the past there was Galician-Portuguese as the "standard", coexisting with other dialects.

Beginning in the 16th century, the extensive contacts between Portuguese travelers and settlers, African and Asian slaves, and local populations led to the appearance of many pidgins with varying amounts of Portuguese influence. As each of these pidgins became the mother tongue of succeeding generations, they evolved into fully fledged creole languages, which remained in use in many parts of Asia, Africa and South America until the 18th century. Some Portuguese-based or Portuguese-influenced creoles are still spoken today, by over 3 million people worldwide, especially people of partial Portuguese ancestry.

There is a maximum of 9 oral vowels and 19 consonants, though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes (Brazilian Portuguese is usually analyzed as having 8 oral vowels). There are also five nasal vowels, which some linguists regard as allophones of the oral vowels, ten oral diphthongs, and five nasal diphthongs. In total, Brazilian Portuguese has 13 vowel phonemes.[99][100]

Chart of monophthongs of the Portuguese of Lisbon, with its /ɐ, ɐ̃/ in central schwa position.

Chart of oral monophthongs of the Portuguese of São Paulo. This speaker features uncommon near-close vowels, but lacks an additional mid back rounded vowel [o̞] present in other parts of Brazil, such as Rio de Janeiro.

To the seven vowels of Vulgar Latin, European Portuguese has added two near central vowels, one of which tends to be elided in rapid speech, like the e caduc of French ([ɯ̽], but commonly represented as /ɨ/). The functional load of these two additional vowels is very low. The high vowels /e o/ and the low vowels /ɛ ɔ/ are four distinct phonemes, and they alternate in various forms of apophony.

Like Catalan and German, Portuguese uses vowel quality to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables: isolated vowels tend to be raised, and in some cases centralized, when unstressed. Brazilian Portuguese, nevertheless, tends to contrast vowel height of unstressed vowels in different ways in relation to other national variants, so more vowel allophones may arise, while [a] and [ɐ] occur in a complementary distribution to which dialects disagree. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the ends of words and have [ɪ̯̃] and [ʊ̯̃] as non-syllabic elements in the Brazilian dialects where [ɪ] and [ʊ] are present.

The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval affricates /ts/, /dz/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/ merged with the fricatives /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, respectively, but not with each other, and there have been no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since then. However, some notable dialectal variants and allophones have appeared, among which:

All post-alveolars are prevalently alveolo-palatal at least in the fluminense and paulistano dialects,[60] with just a few variation for the sibilants and affricates, and are likely to have the said pronunciation elsewhere in Brazil, except for speakers of the nordestino and baiano dialects, as well sibilants and affricates in sulista and gaúcho speech. In Portugal and elsewhere in the Portuguese-speaking world, /ɲ/ and /ʎ/ are also alveolo-palatal, but the sibilants vary in allophony (they tend to be alveolo-palatal as coda, as in Rio de Janeiro, but palato-alveolar elsewhere).

In most regions of Brazil and some rural Portuguese accents, /t/ and /d/ have the affricate allophones [tʃ ~ tɕ] and [dʒ ~ dʑ], respectively, before /i/, /ĩ/, and in some dialects, /ui/ and [ɪ ~ ɪ̃].

At the end of a syllable, the phoneme /l/ is velarized to [ɫ] in most of European Portuguese and vocalized to [u̯] or [ʊ̯] in most of Brazilian Portuguese, though for both of these variants a few isolated dialects present the characteristics of the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, while conservative caipira speech have [ɻ] as allophone of coda/l/ instead. It is also slightly velarized before unrounded close and rounded back vowels in most dialects everywhere (except Northeastern Brazil), and can be slightly velarized in all positions in Portugal, Africa and in some parts of Brazil as the state of Rio de Janeiro. It turns into [ʎ] before [j] in Brazil.

In all of Brazil and parts of Africa, /ɲ/ is pronounced as a nasal palatal approximant[j̃] between vowels, which nasalizes the preceding vowel, so that, for instance, ninho/ˈniɲu/ (nest) is pronounced IPA: [ˈnĩj̃u]. There is evidence that it may be the language's original sound.[103] Actual alveolo-palatal occlusive pronunciation in the said dialects is present in clusters of /n/ and [j], and may also be used to indicate emphasis. On the other hand, sometimes the nasal vowels are interpreted as appending a velar nasal /ŋ/ onto the end, as with bem, /bẽŋ/ (cf. Kristang).

In African and Asian Portuguese, most of Portugal, and few parts of Brazil (e.g. Rio de Janeiro state and metropolitan Florianópolis), sibilants, if outside consonant clusters (e.g. faxIPA: [faks]), are always postalveolar at the ends of syllables, [ʃ ~ ɕ] before voiceless consonants, and [ʒ ~ ʑ] before voiced consonants. The use of postalveolars is present but inconsistent in most of Northern and Northeastern Brazil e.g. estrelas "stars" IPA: [iʃˈtɾelɐs], but for the majority of Brazilian speakers and very few northern dialects of Portugal, only the alveolar sibilants /s/ and /z/ (apico-alveolars in Portugal) will occur in complementary distribution at the ends of syllables, depending on whether the consonant that follows is voiceless or voiced, as in English. Even speakers of dialects which use alveolar-only codas may not follow it consistently, especially in frontier regions and bigger cities where there is influence from more prestigious variants.

In rural caipira speech, /ʎ/ is nearly always replaced with /j/, as such mulher (woman) becomes "muié", família (family) becomes "famíia", os olhos (the eyes) becomes "os oio" (but not óleos, oils, which is homophone with olhos in most of Brazil, and always pronounced with a lateral) and so on, but it is also present in the colloquial speech of a number of sociolects, including some carioca and paulistano speech. Some Galician speakers also present this feature as an influence from yeísmo, a centuries-old phenomenon of Spanish in which /ʎ/ merges with /ʝ/ (the latter phoneme is absent in all Portuguese and Galician dialects), although it is discouraged by the Real Academia Galega.

Although there are two rhotic phonemes, they contrast only between vowels. Word-initially and after /n l s/ only /ʁ/ occurs; after other consonants only /ɾ/ occurs. When a word ends in a rhotic and the other starts in a vowel, the phoneme used in the liaison-like sandhi is /ɾ/. No contrast occurs at the end of a syllable, but the actual sound in this position varies greatly depending on the dialect, especially in Brazil. Conservative setubalense dialect of Central Portugal uses /ʁ/ for all instances of the rhotic because of French phonological influences.

The actual pronunciation of the rhotic phoneme /ʁ/. The actual uvular pronunciation [χ ʁ ʀ] is the most common in Portugal, although the older trill [r] is also heard. Examples: carro, rua, honrar, Israel.

⟨r⟩ represents a flap elsewhere, i.e. following a vowel or following any consonant other than /n/, /l/, /z/, or /ʒ/. Examples: caro, quatro, quarto, mar.

Like in French, the /r/ is commonly pronounced as a voiced[ʁ] or voiceless uvular fricative[χ]. [ʁ] is also the most common pronunciation in the Portuguese and Brazilian versions of the standard language. This guttural R tends to dominate the probably older, more traditional alveolar trill[r], both in Portugal, Brazil and all other Portuguese-speaking countries.

In Brazil, the total inventory of /ʁ/ allophones is rather long, or up to [rçxɣχʁʀħhɦ], the latter eight, specially unvoiced [χ x h], being particularly common, while none of them except archaic [r], that contrast with the flap in all positions, are usual to occur alone in a given dialect. In many Brazilian dialects, /ʁ/ occurs before other consonants, although in other dialects the sound of [ɾ] (as in Portugal, also used by many Brazilian speakers such as most cariocas to indicate emphasis e.g. sem vergonha "shameless, profligate, barefaced" IPA: [ˈsẽj̃ ve̞ɾˈɡõː.ɲɐ]), or even rarer sounds such as [ɹ], [ɻ] or [ɻ̝̊] can be used instead. Word-finally in Brazil, the rhotic is often dropped entirely when speaking colloquially; when preserved, the same variation occurs as before a consonant.

The voiced stops [b d ɡ] are pronounced as the corresponding voiced fricatives [β ð ɣ] between vowels, or between vowels and the tap /ɾ/. Voiced fricatives are a much more common feature in Lisbon and surrounding areas than outside Portugal or among rural and older speakers of southern and insular Portugal at the other end. It is also more common in unstressed syllables.

A notable aspect of the grammar of Portuguese is the verb. Morphologically, more verbal inflections from classical Latin have been preserved by Portuguese than by any other majorRomance language. The Portuguese and Spanish grammars are very close. It has also some innovations not found in other Romance languages (except Galician and the Fala):

The present perfect has an iterative sense unique to the Galician-Portuguese language group. It denotes an action or a series of actions that began in the past and are expected to keep repeating in the future. For instance, the sentence Tenho tentado falar com ela would be translated to "I have been trying to talk to her", not "I have tried to talk to her". On the other hand, the correct translation of the question "Have you heard the latest news?" is not *Tem ouvido a última notícia?, but Ouviu a última notícia?, since no repetition is implied.[105]

Vernacular Portuguese still uses the future subjunctive mood, which developed from medieval West Iberian Romance and in present-day Spanish and Galician has almost entirely fallen into disuse. The future subjunctive appears in dependent clauses that denote a condition that must be fulfilled in the future so that the independent clause will occur. English normally employs the present tense under the same circumstances:

Se eu for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei.

If I am elected president, I will change the law.

Quando fores mais velho, vais entender.

When you grow older, you will understand.

The personal infinitive: infinitives can inflect according to their subject in person and number, often showing who is expected to perform a certain action; cf. É melhor voltares "It is better [for you] to go back", É melhor voltarmos "It is better [for us] to go back." Perhaps for this reason, infinitive clauses replace subjunctive clauses more often in Portuguese than in other Romance languages.